Of Monsters And Meatbags: SWTOR’s HK-51 Update

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Disney owns Star Wars now, so what better way to celebrate than with the most un-Disney character in the entire Star Wars universe? In fairness, Hk-51 isn’t HK-47 (who has already appeared elsewhere in Star Wars: The Old Republic), but they’re quite obviously cut from the same organic-life-loathing cloth. They probably also both loathe cloth, for that matter. Point is, don’t go into a frothy mouthed state of paralytic shock if your new companion combines the words “meat” and “bag” to form a phrase of a far more sinister nature. But the galaxy-spanning quest to secure an adorable HK-51 of your very own is only a small part of SWTOR’s upcoming update 1.5. The rest appears in a hyper-advanced eyeball stimulating holocron after the break.

It actually sounds like there’s quite a lot going into this one – both on the story and mechanics sides of the coin. The HK quest ought to provide some pretty serious mileage – at least literally, even if not in terms of time it takes to actually complete. Knowing BioWare, I imagine HK-51 won’t be a simple carbon copy of HK-47 either. I’m actually quite curious as to whether or not the RPG behemoth will opt to pull some crazy twist with this one. I mean, right now, it all seems a bit too predictable.

Operation: Explosive Combat nightmare mode sounds pretty appealing too, given that it’s adding whole new boss mechanics instead of simply cranking up health and damage stats. Section X may, however, take the cake seeing as a) it experiments with dungeon mechanics and b) features a world boss named DREADTOOTH. I wonder if the rest of him is actually fairly pleasant, and it’s only the one tooth that’s not particularly likable? Regardless, he apparently grows stronger every time he gets defeated, which should be interesting, to say the least.

The free-to-play update, meanwhile, is apparently also “approaching quickly,” though it sounds a bit rubbish to me – at least, in terms of how it stands to segregate the community. But I suppose we’ll see once it’s actually out in the wild. For now, though, are you interested in returning to BioWare’s galaxy far, far away once all these shiny new toys enter the picture? Actually, do any of you still play right now?

I’ve been on the PTS to have a look at this and it’s a mixed bag. The HK-51 chain is pretty good honestly, kept me entertained until it bugged (testing is testing I guess) and I was unable to complete an optional segment. It’s a lot closer to what I personally want from game updates for SWTOR.

Denova nightmare mode is… okay. My guild don’t do the PTS so I had to do it with a PUG. Mechanically it’s pretty good though it’s not massively different from hard mode and at the end of the day it’s the same damn bosses. I just don’t like these difficulty mode mechanics in general. Pretty mediocre really. To add to that, I just can’t see a reason that this wasn’t released along with the original two difficulty modes. It’s not like they used new art or anything.

Section X is garbage. I can’t speak for the heroic 4 mission as it needs more than one person to do it due to the mechanics and I was the only person in the zone. But the hero 2’s and the solo missions are dire. Your basic kill/collection quests and for all their initial bluster about quest immersion the mission terminals have made another return, just like in any other quest based MMO. To make matters worse mob density is a little on the high side, meaning that you can’t really zip around easily without getting into fights. The environment is just Belsavis art assets with night time lighting and skybox. It looks okay, certainly nothing to get all hot over like that guy in the video did.

For most games, theses so-called dev blogs are usually marketing and PR stuff so they are always a bit annoying, though some of them are done quite well and so I can enjoy them.

But this video suffers from one of my pet peeves about theses dev blogs things : the guys who are talking are not actually watching the movie camera.

This video should be directed to us, the players, and not to an invisible third party. That’s annoying all by itself, but the repetitive mention of “the players”, makes it even worse. It looks like they are actually at a board meeting, trying to sell their stuff to the higher-up by talking how it will attract “the players”.

If they really wanted to do a “fake interview” with a third party, then at least they should show the third party, and let him ask scripted questions.